Robotics Special: Robots ride the subway

Welcome back, Superhuman. If you think your morning commute is packed now, wait till you’re sharing a subway seat with a robot. In Shenzhen, China, a fleet of delivery robots is now hopping on the subway with snacks and other deliveries. Meanwhile, Hugging Face’s Reachy Mini 2 robots have generated considerable buzz on social media, netting more than $1M in sales in just five days.

WHAT’S NEXT

The most important news and breakthroughs in robotics this week

1. RealSense spins out of Intel with $50M raise: With tech giants like Tesla and Amazon pouring resources into robotics, another major player is joining the club. Intel is spinning off its AI robotics and vision technology division, RealSense, with a $50M funding round. Realizing the "timing is now for physical AI," the newly independent company will set its sights on building new product lines for robotics automation. It’s another vote of confidence for the robotics market, which Morgan Stanley predicts will reach $5T by 2050.

2. MIT engineers unveil new tool giving anyone the ability to train a robot: The handheld device plugs into standard robotic arms and allows you to train robots in 3 different ways: by remotely controlling them, physically guiding them through the motions, or demonstrating the task yourself as the robot watches and learns — all without writing a single line of code. The device could help robots adapt to environments beyond specialized settings, such as homes and small businesses.

3. Delivery robots ride the subway to restock 7-Elevens: In a world-first, China just rolled out a robot fleet that rides the subway to resupply 7-Elevens in Shenzhen. The bots glide through train doors, navigate elevators, and wheel consignments straight to the stores like clockwork. It’s part of a broader push to bring automation into public-facing roles, giving us a glimpse into how cities may automate everyday logistics in the not-so-distant future. You can watch the robots on the subway here.

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ROBOTS IN ACTION

How robots are transforming the world around us

🧪 Research Rush: North Carolina State engineers have created a robotic lab system that can run experiments all on its own, gathering data every half-second to discover materials 10x faster than human researchers. It could potentially ramp up breakthroughs in everything from clean energy to electronics, delivering in days what would take human researchers years to discover.

🪖 Bot Battle: Ukraine claims to have carried out the world’s first fully unmanned assault, capturing Russian soldiers using only ground robots and aerial drones. The operation didn’t involve any human troops on the front line. It’s a proof-of-concept that low-cost robots can now conduct high-risk military ops — and live to tell the tale. If scaled, it could redefine how wars are fought and who (or what) does the fighting.

🚀 Tow Job: Wisconsin-based Kall Morris has successfully tested its gecko-inspired robotic arms aboard the International Space Station, creating what it calls a "tow truck for space." It can grab objects of virtually any size without needing special docking ports. With plans to hit the market in 2027, it could extend the life of GPS and communication satellites while keeping the cloud of orbital junk from threatening future space missions.

👷 Suit Up: Korean Air is suiting up its maintenance crews with Hyundai and Kia’s new X-ble Shoulder, a wearable robotic exosuit that slashes shoulder strain by up to 60% during overhead repair tasks on its aircraft. It’s designed to reduce injuries, fight fatigue, and keep productivity up. After successful testing with 300 workers, plans are in place to expand the technology to industries like construction, shipbuilding, and agriculture.

INDUSTRY SNAPSHOT

Everything else you need to know this week

Here are the biggest developments in the robotics space that you should know about:

• Hugging Face claims it’s generated $1M in sales for its Reachy Mini desktop robot just five days after launch.

• Ex-Waymo engineers have emerged from stealth with Bedrock Robotics, armed with $80M to retrofit construction vehicles with autonomous driving capabilities.

• Tesla has significantly broadened the geofenced coverage area of its Robotaxi pilot in Austin, less than a month after the service kicked off.

• Tencent-backed AgiBot is reportedly looking to buy Swancor, a wind blade manufacturer, for $279M in an attempt to bypass China’s IPO waiting period.

• Gartner, a global research firm, forecasts that by 2030, 1 in 20 supply chain managers will oversee robots rather than human employees.

• DHL has unveiled plans to pour $748M into UK operations, gearing up to add more than 1,000 new robots to its workforce.

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ROBOT OF THE WEEK

A robot that caught our eye this week

Moley’s B AiR Kitchen is one of the most compact robotic kitchens on the market. 

It can prepare meals for up to 10 people using recipes developed by Michelin-starred chefs. Its space-saving design allows it to bring automated cooking to rooms of different sizes, potentially making personal robot chefs accessible to a much broader market than ever before.

You can check it out here or book a complimentary design meeting here.

ROBO REEL

Watch: Robot dog takes a page out of Spiderman’s book, climbs walls at unprecedented speed

With great power comes great climbing ability.

Japanese engineers have unleashed KLEIYN, a robot dog that shatters climbing records by scaling vertical surfaces 50x faster than its closest competitors. It could revolutionize search and rescue operations in disaster zones, potentially becoming the first responder that can navigate both the rubble on the ground and the vertical shafts in collapsed buildings that would otherwise remain inaccessible to human rescuers.

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Until next time,

Zain and the Superhuman AI team